


The Night of One Thousand Bad Yelp Reviews

by afewreelthoughts



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 03:45:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18161051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/pseuds/afewreelthoughts
Summary: When star bartender Renly gets sick, Stannis steps in to cover his shift. How hard can it be?





	The Night of One Thousand Bad Yelp Reviews

**Author's Note:**

> A huge shout-out to [rensbaratheon](https://rensbaratheon.tumblr.com), [knight-of-the-flowers](https://knight-of-the-flowers.tumblr.com), and [bpdrenly](https://bpdrenly.tumblr.com) who have been brainstorming with me for this fic. bpdrenly found a pub in the UK called "The Three Stags" and thus it began. Title courtesy of knight-of-the-flowers. Y'all are awesome.
> 
> I own nothing and make no money from this. Everything belongs to George R.R. Martin.

Stannis didn’t like feeling sorry for Renly. Mostly because everyone else already did.

_Oh poor Renly! Never knew his parents..._

_Oh poor Renly! Such a sad childhood..._

_Oh poor Renly! So unappreciated..._

_Oh poor Renly_ didn’t even do any work at the bar, and Robert was considering leaving the place to him. His little brother had the entire world wrapped around his pinkie finger, and today he had Stannis wrapped around it, too. 

"Are you sure you can you cover for me?” Renly said and blew his nose again. His voice sounded weak and hoarse, and he looked up at Stannis with those big blue eyes that he used to use to get whatever he wanted from Penrose and Cressen when Stannis was away from home getting his business degree to run Robert's damn bar for him. "I asked for favors from all my friends, and I can't find someone for tonight!" 

Renly's hair was arranged in a stupid knot on the top of his head and his oversized sweater should have made him look like a mess, but instead he just looked stupidly adorable, and too casual for it not to be calculated.

Renly blew his nose yet again, then discarded the empty box of tissues and opened another. Stannis would have thought it was all an act to play hooky, but no one could fake that amount of phlegm.

"You’re sick. You shouldn’t come to work," Stannis said. 

Renly laughed. "Here’s your ginger ale with a flu shot. Enjoy!”

“A flu shot would help someone get well. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Renly blew his nose yet again. “You know where the charts are for the ingredients for the drinks?”

"Yes, yes I know, Renly!” Stannis snapped at him. "I ran this place for Robert for the better part of ten years, I know how to make a cocktail.”

And he did. He knew the ingredients in every mixed drink in the Three Stags' menu, the classics and their originals. The information was in his head, somewhere, and he knew he could have found it easily if everyone had been well behaved (as they always were on the nights Renly worked), but with tonight’s crowd swarming the bar, loud and demanding, the recipes seemed to fall out of his head. His mind was his best asset, the one thing neither of his brothers had; it couldn’t be failing him.

There was some big sporting event that Robert had blaring on all the televisions that night, and Stannis could barely even hear the people yelling at him.

"Give me a minute!” Stannis shouted to a customer, and then he leaned over to Davos, who was balancing a tray on each hand. "Since when are the people who come here so rude?”

"Stannis, be nice.”

“I’m nice, I’m not the problem.”

“You’ve got Brienne there to help you, don’t you?”

Brienne, also run half off her feet, was hogging all of Renly’s charts that Stannis had sworn he didn’t need to use.

“Fine,” Stannis said. “Go do your job.”

Davos left with a sympathetic smile, and Stannis suddenly remembered he had a question for him. “Davos! What’s in a margarita?”  

Brienne pushed one of the charts across the bar to him. Stannis grimaced. Did she have to make such a show of it? She was embarrassing him.

“Hey! Where’s my dracarys?” one man yelled.

“Be patient,” Stannis said. “I’ve heard it’s a virtue.”

He had been putting off that particular drink, that must have been why he forgot it for an embarrassing amount of time. With all the people pushing in on him and making so much noise that the whole bar felt hazy, lighting something on fire in the middle of this crowd just didn’t seem safe.

His hands were shaking so badly that not all of the margarita made it into the glass, but he pushed it across the table and mopped up the mess before starting on the dracarys.

“I need some space,” he said when he pulled out a lighter. No one seemed to hear him. They almost seemed to be closing in on him.

Stannis felt his breaths come quick and shallow, and a sudden, sharp pain in his chest. He wanted to sink down behind the bar, but then they would see him, and he couldn’t take any more embarrassment.

 “ _I said I need some space!”_

They heard that, at least, and pulled back far enough to let him light the drink without setting the whole damn place on fire, though Stannis was convinced that couldn’t make things worse.

The man reached out to grab the drink and blow out the fire on top. Renly usually got applause.

“You need to chill, man,” another man said, his beer glass dangling precariously from one hand.

“I’ll take that,” Stannis said.

“Another,” the man slurred. “Casterly Rock IPA.”

“No, I’m cutting you off.”

“Fuck you, man…”

Stannis sighed. “You can have a soda, if you like. On the house.”

The man sneered and left. They started giving him actual space at that point, retreating away to their stupid little groups yelling at the television. He was glad. Fewer idiots to deal with.

The pain in his chest still hadn’t gone away, and he stretched his shoulders back. That only made it hurt more.

“Glenfiddich ten year?” said a soft voice. A woman about his age with long red hair sat on the barstool at the very end. She had seemed to be half watching the game, half reading a worn copy of the Confessions of St. Augustine, but now she was looking directly at him.

“Oh,” Stannis said. The woman had been sitting quietly and he supposed he owed her an apology. This probably hadn’t been the first time she’d asked for a refill. Renly would have given her the drink for free making big Bambi eyes and saying how sorry he was she'd had to wait. Stannis didn’t understand why that made business sense.

“That’ll be $10,” Stannis said instead.

“It’s getting late. I’ll settle my tab,” she said, pushing over her card.

“I remember reading that in school,” he said, pointing to her book. That had been a philosophy elective he’d taken before settling into a business degree. He still thought about it fondly. “I was raised Catholic but I don’t believe in any of it anymore.”

“Then I’ll try not to convert you back,” she said.

Stannis returned her card and poured her drink.

“It’s not usually this busy here,” Stannis said, by way of apology.

“I imagine you’ll want me gone soon, after such a long night…” She was leaning in towards him, and her dark eyes seemed to be taking in every line of his face.

He wanted to tell her that it was inappropriate to make advances on people on the clock in the service industry, but it was no more than a question, she hadn’t done anything, and he... liked it.

He rested his forearms on the bar.

“No it’s all right. It’s calmed down now, and I’d appreciate good company.”

She closed her book. “You’re not used to crowds like this?” She was looking at him with a quiet intensity that almost made him flush.

“I run this bar, but I don’t usually tend bar.”

“I thought Robert owed it?”

Stannis sighed. “No, not on his own.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”

“That's all right.” Stannis stood up and stretched again.  

“I didn’t mean to upset you. Maybe we can talk somewhere else? When you get off work?” the red-haired woman said.

“Why do you want to talk to me?”

“Is that the way you talk to everyone who takes an interest in you?”

“No,” he said. “It’s just that no one’s ever taken an interest in me.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

Her eyes held him there, and he felt as if every nerve in his body was singing, but the pain in his chest and the rage in his head were both gone.

“My shift ends in thirty minutes,” he said.

This wasn’t like him, he told himself as he met her in the light of a streetlamp outside the bar.

This wasn’t like him, he told himself as he curled on the red couch in her apartment, telling her things he’d never told anyone before.

He kept telling himself that this wasn’t like him at all... but he liked not being like himself.

The next morning, with the sun streaming in through her thin curtains – he hadn’t noticed how sheer they were last night – he studied the patterns of stars painted on the ceiling. Her red hair fanned out across her crimson sheets, long limbs extended across the entire bed, one arm resting on his chest. He wondered what the right thing to do would be in this situation. Leave a note? Leave his number? Those would imply he wanted to see her again, and that was a decision he wasn’t ready to make yet… Should he wake her up? And say what?

He gently pulled away and gathered his clothes from the chair where he’d left them. He’d insisted on folding them, and she hadn’t commented on it. She’d looked at him like she liked looking at him.

She stirred on the bed, eyelashes fluttering.

He dressed himself quickly, picked up the pencil and pad of paper she kept on her bedside table, and quickly wrote his name and number before he had to rethink it all in person, too, and he didn't think he could do that right now. He pulled on his shoes, made sure he looked halfway decent, and left.

The bar was on the way between her place and his. No one would be there at this hour, so it would be a perfect time to go through the ledgers from last night, and since he had a toothbrush and floss there, he could freshen up, too.

He unlocked the door to the dark restaurant, only to find Robert seated in the booth facing the door, arms crossed and a storm on his face. Without even a hello, Robert snapped. “What the hell happened here last night?”

Stannis froze.

What? How did he know?

This wasn’t fair. If Robert had gone home with someone, he’d be proudly telling them all the details in the morning. If Renly had gone home with someone, Robert would be shamelessly asking for all the details, gross questions Renly always managed to deflect without actually answering them….

 _How?_ How had he deflected them?

“Have you seen this?” Robert flashed his phone at him, and for one horrified second Stannis thought that maybe Robert had video of them.

“What is it?” Stannis said, still not looking.

“You haven’t seen this? Oh, I forgot, you’re still in the fucking dark ages with your flip phone.”

“I don’t have that one anymore. Our internet provider took it away from me."

"They upgraded you, Stannis. You were _upgraded_ ," Robert said. It was an old argument, and on another day Stannis would have just walked away or gone straight into yelling. 

“I didn’t need an upgrade. Nothing was wrong with my old phone," he said.

“You wanted a new one, didn't you?"

“Yes, a new phone the same as my old one.”

“They don’t make those anymore!”

“No, no I haven’t seen whatever I needed to have seen, Robert.”

“Cause now that you have a smart phone, you still refuse to download anything onto it."

"Those apps steal your information, Robert."

"Just fucking look at this!" And Robert finally shoved his phone in Stannis’ face. The screen seemed to display some internet review app. There was a picture of the bar, The Three Stags, and the first review Stannis could see was one star.

"Scroll down," Robert grumbled.

Stannis scrolled down. There were lots of one star reviews, all seemingly dated from the previous night.

Stannis kept an impassive face because he knew that would enrage Robert even further. The customers were unhappy, so it was all Stannis’s fault, apparently. And where had he been last night? Getting drunk at his favorite booth?

"Our customers are unhappy."

"Our customers were rude to me," Stannis said.

Robert blinked. " _Excuse me_?"

"They don’t talk to you the same way they do to me. They were rude."

"And I suppose they are unfairly nice to Renly as well, and you’re the only hard worker in this family?"

Stannis ground his teeth to keep from speaking. Robert was making his perfectly reasonable points sound ridiculous.

"And you want me to hand over the place to you?"

He didn't need to go that far.

“I never said hand it over,” Stannis said, “I meant with all the work I do, I should get more recognition.”

“That's not what you fucking meant, and you know it!” Robert snapped, settling further into his favorite booth. “Snide and sticking your fucking nose up at me when we meet with investors, as if you're the only person whose opinion matters.”

Stannis looked back at the phone. At least the people there were only yelling at him through a small screen. One review jumped out from the rest, four out of five stars.

 

**RedMel:** _" I think the bartender did a good job. It was a busy night, after all. And I don't care what anyone says: he’s even cuter than the other one."_

 

It took a moment for Stannis to connect the name to the face he had seen last night - and then, all of a sudden, he felt himself shiver. And hearing Renly referred to as "the other one" was… refreshing.

He began to type a reply.

 

 **TheThreeStags:** _“Thank you for the review but any comment on my physical attractiveness or that of my brother is not appropriate in this context.”_

 

“What the hell are you smiling at?” Robert grumbled. “Is this some kind of fucking joke to you? I didn’t think I was talking to Renly.”

Stannis felt his smile fade slightly. “My opinion does matter, Robert,” he said. “And I didn’t see you offering to cover Renly’s shift.”

“Give me my phone back.”

Just as Stannis dropped it on the table, he heard the chirp of a text message being received.  

Robert looked at his phone and frowned.

A second chirp came from Stannis’s back pocket. He pulled out his phone to see two new texts from an unknown number.

 

_(9:30) “I apologize and the review has been edited. God bless.”_

 

_(9:31) “This is Mel from last night, in case that wasn’t obvious.”_

 

“Who’s texting you?”

“Renly,” Stannis said.

“Is he coming back soon?”

“Yeah,” Stannis said, and starting texting a response.

This also wasn’t like him. He didn’t conduct lengthy text conversations, ever - it was a silly way to commmunicate - but Mel had interesting things to say.

Mel didn't show up that night, or the following one, and Stannis did his best at keeping his temper at their bar's awful clientele, including one obnoxious young man who was clearly making up drinks that "Renly would know how to make" just to get under his skin. 

It had been four days since Stannis had been tending bar, but it felt upwards of a year when Renly finally walked in. 

Stannis ran from the bar where one man had been haranguing him about the way he poured beer and wrapped his arms around his little brother. "You're back!"

Renly froze. “Are you okay?” he said, laughing. For the first time, Stannis had the thought that maybe he wasn't laughing at him.

"I'm fine. I'm just glad you're back." He pulled back. “And you cut that stupid topknot off. Thank god!" 

"What, did you miss me or something?" His smile began to fade. 

"You're good at your job."

"What's wrong? What happened to you?"

"Why? I'm fine."

"You're acting all nice. What do you want?" 

"I don't want anything, I'm just happy to see you. And now I don't have to listen to all those awful people."

Renly laughed again, and this time Stannis laughed with him. "Okay, I'll take it from here," he said, and everyone at the bar cheered when they saw him. 

Stannis wasn't listening though, because he saw a familiar face sitting in one of the booths. Mel was alone, and had another book open next to her scotch.

"May I join you?" he asked.

"Of course."

Stannis sat across from him. 

"I see that your brother's back."

"Yes, I can't tell you how relieved I am."

"You didn't have anything nice to say about him a few nights ago."

Stannis looked up at the bar, where Renly seemed to be talking to two people at once. "Well maybe I was wrong." He made a mental note to print new drink menus that gave Renly credit for his recipes.

"It's nice to see you happy."

"I..." Stannis furrowed his brow. "I don't know if I'm happy."

"You don't know how that feels?"

"It's been a while," he said. 

She tilted her head to one side. "That's a shame, because I saw you just a few nights ago." 

"Well, that..." Stannis traced his fingertip along the edge of the table. "That was an exception to the rule." 

"Good."

"I'm free tonight," he said. 

She lifted an eyebrow.

"Or another night, if that's better for you?"

 "How do you know I'm not waiting for someone else?" 

He swallowed. Maybe she'd just felt sorry for him that night and decided he could do with some pity sex. He could keep his pride and leave now. "I don't," he said. "I'm just asking."

She smiled at him. "Then let's go."

He ducked back behind the bar for his coat, where he saw Davos whispering something to Renly. 

"Stannis has a GIRLFRIEND!?" was the last thing he heard as he slipped out into the cool night with Mel, a smile on his face.


End file.
